Not long ago, telephone services were considered necessary but expensive such that a household typically had a single telephone line to serve all of the household members. Today, telecommunications technologies have greatly expanded and telephone services have become less expensive. Many households now have two or more telephone lines, and many people carry portable telephones, also known as mobile or cellular telephones. Some households may have added a second home telephone line for a young child, an aging parent, a fax machine, or a dial-up Internet connection. Additionally, each member of the household may have a separate mobile phone with a mobile phone number unique to that member.
However, there is rarely a home telephone line for each member of the household, and if a household includes a large number of people, it is not practical to have a home telephone line for each person. Furthermore, there are occasions when mobile phones must be turned off or may not provide quality or affordable service. People may also be wary of providing their mobile phone number to others who are not either close friends or relatives. Accordingly, having a primary telephone line for all members of a household is still important to most residential telephony customers.
When a telephone rings at a house, a user may answer the call only to learn that the call is for a child who is not at home. The user may take a message for the child on a piece of paper and leave the message for the child to see. Alternatively, the call could be for the user's spouse, who may be on a business trip, but reachable through a mobile phone. In this case, the user may provide the mobile phone number to the calling party, so the calling party may call the user's spouse directly. Alternatively, the call could be from someone, e.g., inquiring about a newspaper advertisement to sell one of the family's cars. The user may not wish to answer the call at that time, but instead direct the call to a voice mailbox for later retrieval or to play a specific message with further information about the car.
In an environment in which a telephone number is shared by a number of people, a caller frequently does not have control over routing its call to a specific member of the shared environment. The called party does not have a convenient way to specify incoming call routing instructions based on which member of the household the caller is trying to reach. Additionally, the called party has no means by which to route an incoming call to a specific member based on the topic of the call, e.g., a caller inquiring about a newspaper ad selling a used car. Furthermore, the called party has no way to route an incoming call to a specific recorded message (e.g., driving directions to an upcoming party) based on input from the caller.
When more than one person is associated with a telephone line, incoming calls may be for several different people and varying purposes. Even in situations where there is only one person associated with a telephone line, the user cannot generally specify how to handle incoming calls based on the caller's purpose. Thus, there is a need for a system and method allowing residential customers to specify the handling of incoming calls.
Residential telephony customers typically do not enjoy many of the features and services related to management of incoming calls that are available to business customers. One reason for this is the high cost of the customer premises equipment (CPE) required to provide such features. Thus, interactive voice response (IVR) systems have historically been used only in business environments for the handling of incoming calls.
Prior IVR systems are large, expensive, and self-contained. Typically, a stand-alone box containing the IVR system is connected to one or more trunk lines for the business. When an incoming call reaches a trunk line, the caller typically hears a menu of choices, e.g. “press the extension of the person you wish to reach; press 1 for a company directory; or press 0 for the operator.” These menus are preprogrammed in a customized terminal that is usually adjacent to the stand-alone box that houses the IVR system. Additionally, the IVR system requires prerecorded announcements and plays the same menus to all callers, even though there may be hundreds of people served by the trunk lines connected to the IVR system. Thus, IVR systems utilized by businesses are not desirable for residential customers because of the expense and lack of customization available. Accordingly, there is a need for a system and method of providing a network-based personal IVR service that enables residential customers to customize the manner in which incoming calls are handled.